State berths elude BLHS golfers

Basehor-Linwood golfers performed well at the Class 4A regional tournament on Monday, but it wasn’t good enough to punch either a team or individual ticket to the state tournament.

The Bobcats finished in fourth-place as a team.

Jefferson County West won the tournament with a four-player score of 356. Topeka Hayden finished second with 367 and tournament host Concordia finished third with a round of 429.

Basehor-Linwood shot a 443.

Brooke LaRue of Hayden was the individual champion with a 77, and De Soto’s Brittani Jenson took second with an 80.

Basehor-Linwood’s Marissa Dove fired a 99, which was an 11-stroke improvement from last year’s regional tournament but three strokes away from qualifying for state. Nicole Vasquez shot a 103, a nine-stroke improvement from her 2010 regional score. Rachel Van Fleet made an eight-stroke improvement from last year’s regional with her round of 106.

“I thought overall we played pretty well,” BLHS coach Noah Simpson said. “We had three girls who shot better in this year’s regional tourney than they did in last year’s.”

The competition for individual state berths was made tougher by the fact that some teams had solid individuals but didn’t field a full team. Jenson from De Soto was a primary example. DHS brought three golfers to regionals. Four golfers constitutes a full team.

Likewise, Holton golfer Kristie Miller shot an 87 to qualify as an individual, but the Wildcats brought just two players to regionals.

Simpson said it was disappointing for the players to not have another tournament to prepare for, but he applauded the improvement they showed in the regional tournament from last season to this season.

“Our kids placed sixth, seventh and eighth (out of the players from non-qualifying teams),” Simpson said. “We were right there as a team. Sometimes in golf you can play well and come up short. That was disappointing for our seniors who worked so hard all season and last summer to prepare for the year.”